Harvey Milk served as Navy officer in San Diego

After the Navy has named ships for civil-rights leaders Cesar Chavez and Medgar Evers, a San Diego County congressman and a task force are pushing for gay-rights pioneer Harvey Milk to receive a similar honor.

The GLBT Historic Task Force of San Diego County, in conjunction with Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, wrote letters on April 15 and 20 to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus urging them to name the “next appropriate ship” after Milk, who reportedly served in the Navy as a young officer during the Korean War.

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Milk is best known for becoming one of the first openly gay men to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. A year later he and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by a political rival.

The GLBT Historic Task Force of San Diego County is an organization formed this year out of the effort to name a San Diego street after Milk, said chairman Nicole Murray Ramirez, a longtime gay-rights activist who knew Milk. Ramirez also works with the Harvey Milk Foundation, started by Milk’s nephew Stuart Milk.

According to Ramirez, Milk served aboard the submarine rescue ship Kittiwake as a diving officer. He was also stationed at San Diego Naval Station, where he was a diving instructor.

Filner, who serves on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee and is running for San Diego mayor, agreed to write a letter in support of the effort after being asked by Ramirez’s group.

San Diego is on the way to naming a Hillcrest street after Milk. The city’s planning commission approved a proposal this month to rename Blaine Avenue leading up to the San Diego LGBT Community Center as Harvey Milk Street.

There’s also a move to put Milk on a U.S. postage stamp.

Ramirez’s group requested that a Navy submarine, aircraft carrier or other vessel be named for Milk, according to its letter and a Monday story in San Diego LGBT Weekly.

However, Navy ship-naming conventions usually dictate that aircraft carriers are named for U.S. presidents and submarines are named in honor of states or cities.

The Navy has been criticized for detouring from its own guidelines, as when it recently named a littoral combat ship for former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, instead of following the tradition of using city names.

To answer complaints that the choice of Chavez and the Evers was political, the Navy secretary has responded that that class of ships – cargo and ammunition ships – is typically named for pioneers, visionaries and explorers.